Mural Support: How Paint Reclaims Public Planning

I am an avid advocate for extensive downtown activity (and for alliterations as well). I like the kind of cities that give you too many reasons to stay out longer than you initially intended to be. Despite how many years I've called the colonial city of Richmond my home, it still continues to keep me on my toes nonetheless. Whether it's a trip to the Poe Museum for some gothic-style gift shopping or going out with your friends to watch a VCU basketball game, the unconventionality in attractions that Richmond has to offer has been a quirky quality I hold near and dear to my heart.

That variety is what keeps the city from every feeling too predictable. As a mixing pot of culture and creativity, Richmond never sticks to simply one personality. Old brick buildings from the 18th century sit right next to student apartments, record stores, and performance spaces without much warning or explicit distinction. One block feels historic, preserved in time like insects in amber. The next feels vibrant and contemporary. The differing worlds contribute to an experience that feels natural over time. Every pathway feels like a new version of the city, depending on where you turn and how far you keep walking. But what makes the experience possible is not just what exists inside the buildings, it's on the outside as well.

At nearly every block and side street there is one thing that seems to stay consistent: the street art. It's hard to miss, the wacky and larger-than-life depictions of everyday people, animals, and pop-culture icons with airbrushed color. Murals stretch across storefronts and wrap around rustic industrial buildings that now house small businesses and studios. They face sidewalks and alleyways, parking lots become surrounded by spritzes and strokes of paint. They don't wait to grab your attention, they exist where people already are, turning the sterile style of many Richmond structures to something memorable. That memorability changes how the city functions. Blank walls become landmarks. Side streets now have a stylish intentionality that they didn't possess before. You begin navigating by murals instead of your typical street signs.

If I ever ask you to meet me near the Byrd Theatre and you feel yourself getting lost on the way there, I will tell you to keep going until you reach the mural with the enormous head shooting thick blue laser beams out if its eyes. Flowers are bursting across the panel, the body's arms extending out as if it was offering you the directions itself. That is 2416 W Cary Street, exactly five blocks from where your destination ought to be, and a site that is so unmistakably loud in its neighborhood's style that you will never forget where you are the next time you walk this path. It actively curates the urban design of the block, having a decision in what gets remembered amongst its residents.

Street mural at 2416 W Cary Street, Richmond, VA

Public space in this city has always been a topic of contestation, an absence of true neutrality. For decades, the most visible attractions were deliberately designed around the conservative history rooted in the formal capital of the confederacy. Monument Avenue had streets oriented around the grandiose statues of historical figures such as Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, sightlines centered on their large scale and impact on downtown disposition. It was planning built without much of the inclusion of the communities who had an equal impact in the city's identity, contributing to meaningful conversations about the unequal division of which perspectives were promoted into the very public landscape. The geography was serving as

Over the past decade, murals have begun to incite change within that very same landscape. Since the early 2010s, organized projects and community-funded initiatives have turned "blank canvases" on the sides of residential and commercial properties from Carytown, Jackson Ward, Monroe Ward, and Manchester into open-air galleries. Through the collaboration of nonprofits and private donors, these projects now sit in some of the most visible parts of the city, where daily life occurs. Whenever I step out to get groceries or simply cross the street, their presence is unavoidable, and with that visibility comes the opportunity to create messages that demand attention. Some murals brighten a block while others confront you directly. The "Say Their Names" mural is one of those works. Spanning a hundred-foot long wall, it lists the names of victims of police brutality alongside a gray painting of a Black man with his hands raised up. It is deliberate in what it chooses to show, centering the communities that were long excluded from the city's visual elements.

"Say Their Names" mural located at the intersection of Broad Street and 3rd street in Richmond, VA

The street arts offers what I call "mural support" for the marginalized communities of my home, showing solidarity with every step of the way.